Unanimous Consent Requests

Floor Speech

We are approaching $40 trillion in debt. The interest is a trillion dollars a year. Interest rates are rising. Likely the biggest threat to our country is our national debt.

No one disputes that our veterans deserve to receive the benefits they earned through years of service to our Nation, but we should offset it. There is waste in abundance throughout our budget. There is no reason why we shouldn't cut waste to pay for this.

What I proposed is a simple amendment to this legislation that would basically get rid of money that hasn't been spent over the last 10 years in welfare for refugees. They keep allocating a couple billion dollars more every year. The fund now has $26 billion in it.

Refugees shouldn't be getting welfare. You should be coming to our country for the American dream. This is not the American dream to come here for welfare. We should not have welfare for refugees or anybody-- legal or illegal--coming into this country.

In fact, it is the law of the land that if you come here legally, you are not eligible for welfare for 5 years unless you are a refugee and then we say: Oh, well, they can be on welfare, and many of them continue on welfare. In the Somali population, well over 80 percent of the Somalis are on welfare 10 years after they get here.

So what I am proposing is, if we want to do this, if we think this is fair to add the disability spending to the retirement spending and not have any kind of canceling out, pay for it. Why don't we end this refugee program? That is all I am asking.

If you want to help and provide more money for soldiers who are retired or disabled, do that, but pay for it by not giving money to refugees.

So it is easy. We should do it. But when people say around here: ``Oh, we don't need to do this'' and ``this is too important to offset with a cut,'' that is why we are $40 trillion in the hole.

Interest rates over a trillion. That is paying at about 2.5 percent, on average. The latest Treasury sales of 30-year bonds was 5.2 percent. If we roll over the debt and pay all of it at 5 percent, then we are talking about $2 trillion in debt payments each year.

So, yes, we have to be responsible. Money doesn't grow on trees. We can't simply say: Well, this is for a good cause; therefore, we are just going to explode the debt.

I mean, ADM Mike Mullen was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he said that the biggest threat to our Nation was not from without, but it was from within. It is from the debt we are accumulating.

So just saying something is a good cause is not enough. We have to pay for it. There is waste up and down and all throughout our budget. And for goodness' sake, we should use this as an opportunity to say: We have this and it is a good thing and we can go ahead and do this, but we will do it by getting rid of bad spending.

You know, we still have nearly a billion dollars that we are doling out to Afghanistan.

We wasted trillions of dollars on that war. We were there for 20 years. We have gone. And there is an allegation that money from that reconstruction fund goes to NGOs and that it still winds up in the hands of the Taliban, to this day.

There are all kinds of money throughout government. There is said to be $180 billion worth of improper payments in government.

Should we let people keep writing checks to people who are ripping off the system? Did you not see what happened in Minnesota? Nine billion dollars is being stolen. They set up a daycare, and nobody really comes. They set up a center for autism. They had a ``Learing Center.'' They left out the ``n'': L-e-a-r-i-n-g. And they were taking your money.

Why shouldn't we just cut that out? Why shouldn't we quit doing that? Why shouldn't we save money if there is something better to be done with the money? But just spending money, no matter how good the cause, is not what we should do.

So there is an Agency called the National Science Foundation. They have an $8.6 billion budget. About $8.5 billion is spent on crazy stuff. William Proxmire first started talking about the National Science Foundation in the 1970s, when he would give a Golden Fleece Award. One of the first awards was for a project that was $50,000. This was a while ago. It was only $50,000, but they were going to study what makes people happy. Does anybody think that is a good use of your money: What makes people happy?

Why do people fall in love--another 50 grand. Now, that might be a fun or interesting article in Cosmopolitan, but when we have a $40 trillion debt, maybe we should cut some of their money.

One of my favorite studies was this: They wanted to determine whether tequila or gin made people more feisty, more cantankerous, more likely to commit violence. So they got codfish, and they guzzled--you know, they poured the tequila down the mouth of a codfish and then the gin. And I will bet you we can just poll the audience: Tequila, of course.

But that is the kind of crap your money is going to. And if we are not willing to cut any of that, even for a good cause, why are we here?

Why does it get worse every year? Because nobody cuts.

For the National Science Foundation, we doubled their budget a couple of years ago. Not more than 2 or 3 years ago, there was a study--it was about a million dollars--and they wanted to know: Are Japanese quail more sexually promiscuous when they are on cocaine? We can probably poll the audience on that one.

Another one of my favorites is--this was three-quarters of a million dollars, and they wanted to know: What did Neil Armstrong say when he landed on the Moon? So if you ever remember this from 50-some-odd years ago--the crackly sort of audio and the black-and-white video--and he says, ``One small step for man.'' Or did he say, ``One small step for a man''? So we spent 750 grand to study and listen to the old tape of Neil Armstrong to see: Did he say, ``One small step for man,'' or ``One small step for a man''?

To make matters worse, to make it even more insulting, this was $750,000 that had been designated for autism research; and instead of it going to autism research, it was secondarily contracted out to study what Neil Armstrong had to say.

Two million dollars was spent studying whether or not, if you go to the cafeteria and the person in front of you sneezes on the food, are you more or less likely to take the food that somebody just sneezed on. This is crazy. It is insulting, and it is ridiculous.

Why shouldn't we cut some of that waste and use it for this new veterans program. And this isn't a veterans program where there is or there isn't money. There is money being spent. This is to allow more money for a veterans program. This isn't to supply money to people who aren't getting any money.

I am for--we are a rich country. We should do it. But we should cut spending from where we are wasting it, and there are plenty of alternatives. If the Senator has another alternative where he would like to cut spending, I am your guy. I am for cutting spending across the board. There is waste everywhere.

But rather than come forward with programs that are feel-good and that have sympathetic people you want to help, come forward with these programs and say: But I am conservative. I worry about the debt. I worry about the trillion dollars in interest. And this is how we will pay for them.

Until that day, I will object.

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